A LARGE EGYPTIAN FAIENCE AMULET, PTOLEMAIC PERIOD, CIRCA 332-30 B.C.

拍品描述

A LARGE EGYPTIAN TURQUOISE-GLAZED FAIENCE AMULET, PTOLEMAIC PERIOD, CIRCA 332-30 B.C. Of elongated tapering form, the flat plaque narrowing from a broad shoulder to a rounded point, and surmounted by a small pierced projection for suspension. The upper register is defined by a horizontal band above a row of short vertical striations resembling a fringed or feathered collar, below which a raised rectangular panel extends the length of the body, terminating short of the pointed base. The reverse is plain. The surface retains a brilliant turquoise glaze with areas of powdery sandy encrustation and localised pitting consistent with burial. The form corresponds to the class of pendant amulet worn suspended at the throat or laid upon the mummy as part of the funerary assemblage. The fringed band at the head reads as a stylised broad collar or wesekh, and the tapering shaft below carries the schematic register of an inner panel of the type often occupied by an inscription, a djed pillar, or a divine figure in more elaborate examples. In its present treatment, reduced to bold architectural volumes without secondary detail, the amulet belongs to the strand of Late Period and Ptolemaic production in which protective form is preserved but iconographic detail is pared back to essentials. Faience in ancient Egypt was never simply a coloured ceramic. Its glassy siliceous body and its characteristic blue-green glaze were understood as materially embodying regeneration, the fertile waters of the Nile, and the shining flesh of the gods. Objects of turquoise faience carried this symbolism into the tomb, where the colour itself was apotropaic and life-renewing, independent of any figural iconography the piece might bear. This is why amuletic and votive production, from small wedjat eyes to shabtis to pendant plaques of this kind, so consistently favoured the turquoise-blue palette across a span of more than a millennium. Amulets of this scale, at close to fifteen centimetres in length, sit at the upper end of the range for wearable or mummy-applied pieces and would have been conspicuous elements of the funerary equipment. The Ptolemaic period saw the continued mass production of faience amulets in temple and workshop contexts, often from moulds, serving both the indigenous Egyptian funerary market and the wider Hellenistic world's appetite for Egyptian religious objects. This amulet exemplifies the reduced, architectural mode of late faience production, in which the protective vocabulary of the earlier pharaonic tradition, the broad collar, the tapering shaft, the panelled field, is retained as pure form and carried by the intrinsic sanctity of the turquoise glaze itself. Dimensions: Length: 14.5cm

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